Re: The Remailer Crisis

Tim writes:
> One thing I should've noted is that a Linux-based cheap remailer is
> mostly useless without a "live connection" to the Net. 

I disagree - live connections  are great for fast-response systems,
but we got along just fine in the uucp dialup world with occasional
connections; in an environment like remailers where you _want_
batchy performance, the clunkiness can even be a "feature".

I don't know how many providers are offerring uucp or ip dialout
from their servers, or whether they're much cheaper than real ip,
but you can do ok with, say, hourly polling to a TIA or term connection
to fill your mailbox from a POP server, or nightly if that's enough.

TIA also has the advantage over SLIP/PPP that outgoing mail from your 
system will _always_ have unverifiable IP addresses - you look like
netcom.com, just like everyone else TIA-connecting from netcom does.
And connections from shared-IP-address-pool systems like netcruiser
or dialup PPP systems probably don't do much logging of who's used
what IP address beyond when nameserver caches clear.

		Bill

Okay, I'm willing to start a remailer.  I'll have a new account on a
different machine within a few days and I'll do it there.

Anyone want to volunteer for a little hand holding while I get it
started?
-- 
America - a country so rich and so strong we can reward the lazy 
          and punish the productive and still survive (so far)

Don Melvin                  storm@ssnet.com                finger for PGP key.

From: wcs@anchor.ho.att.com

   Tim writes:
   > One thing I should've noted is that a Linux-based cheap remailer is
   > mostly useless without a "live connection" to the Net. 

   I disagree - live connections  are great for fast-response systems,
   but we got along just fine in the uucp dialup world with occasional
   connections; 

And if get someone to do secondary MX for you that _is_ fulltime
connected, then the only latency for mail is the poll time.  If you're
on an ISDN line, for example, you can get online and poll every five
minutes for ten seconds at a time (ten seconds only when there's no
mail), cutting down line charges for fulltime _idle_ connectivity by a
factor of thirty.  Not all that expensive at all, really.

Eric

> 
> And if get someone to do secondary MX for you that _is_ fulltime
> connected, then the only latency for mail is the poll time.  If you're
> on an ISDN line, for example, you can get online and poll every five
> minutes for ten seconds at a time (ten seconds only when there's no
> mail), cutting down line charges for fulltime _idle_ connectivity by a
> factor of thirty.  Not all that expensive at all, really.
> 
> Eric
>
Exactly how does this work at your location Eric? Here in Southwestern Bell
we don't use the D except for call initiation and termination. There is no
useage tarriff other than this. Hence, we have no idle charge. My bill runs
a flat $72 and some change each month.

Take care.

From: root <root@einstein.ssz.com>

   Exactly how does this work at your location Eric? Here in Southwestern Bell
   we don't use the D except for call initiation and termination. There is no
   useage tarriff other than this. 

The standard residential tariff here in Pac Bell is flat rate duing
non-business hours and per-minute during them.

Eric

On Tue, 24 Jan 1995, Eric Hughes wrote:

>    From: root <root@einstein.ssz.com>
> 
>    Exactly how does this work at your location Eric? Here in Southwestern Bell
>    we don't use the D except for call initiation and termination. There is no
>    useage tarriff other than this. 
> 
> The standard residential tariff here in Pac Bell is flat rate duing
> non-business hours and per-minute during them.

Most LEC's charge per-minute for ISDN.  Pac Bell and SWBT are some of the 
few exceptions.  What's even worse is in some states there isn't even a 
residential ISDN tariff, hence all ISDN lines are "business" lines and 
billed accordingly.  The only real solution is to demand dial the 
connection from both ends.  This is fairly straightforward assuming your 
provider is set up for it, since there is a lot of ISDN equipment that 
will brfing the connection up only when there are packets to send then 
idle it out.

An economical alternative in some areas is frame-relay.  In Washington 
state USwest wants ~$70/month for a 56k FR link to anywhere in your 
LATA.  The providers around here charge $100-$150 to link a single 
machine to the net via FR, and $150-$350 if you are routing a whole 
subnet.

-- 
Christopher E Stefan  *  flatline@u.washington.edu  *  PGP 2.6ui key by request

> Most LEC's charge per-minute for ISDN.  Pac Bell and SWBT are some of the 
> few exceptions.  What's even worse is in some states there isn't even a 
> residential ISDN tariff, hence all ISDN lines are "business" lines and 
> billed accordingly.  The only real solution is to demand dial the 
> connection from both ends.  This is fairly straightforward assuming your 
> provider is set up for it, since there is a lot of ISDN equipment that 
> will brfing the connection up only when there are packets to send then 
> idle it out.
>
Here in SWB territory there are residential and business rates for ISDN.
 
> An economical alternative in some areas is frame-relay.  In Washington 
> state USwest wants ~$70/month for a 56k FR link to anywhere in your 
> LATA.  The providers around here charge $100-$150 to link a single 
> machine to the net via FR, and $150-$350 if you are routing a whole 
> subnet.
>
Be shure to multiply these costs by 2 since a singe 56k is approx. half of
2 B's that have been bonded. I specificaly looked for a provider who didn't
charge according to how many machines I have on the other end. I am buying
the ability to send a certain amount of bits over a wire in a certain amount
of time. Whether those bits come from 1 or 100 machines is irrelevant.

I would have no problem w/ interNIC chargeing for registering IP's (which I
hear may happen sooner than we realize) since I got a full 'C' when I set up.
We already use 23 of the addresses and will be looking at adding at least a
couple of more in the near future.

In the case of the CombiNet 160 the choice of 'idle-out' or 'tear-down' is
one of software. The codec is programmed via a serial line (which the dox say
can be hooked to a modem, as if anyone was that stupid) port and has its own 
little menu system. I keep both my B's running all the time.

Take care.

In article <199501240400.UAA20706@largo.remailer.net> you write:
>   From: wcs@anchor.ho.att.com
>
>   Tim writes:
>   > One thing I should've noted is that a Linux-based cheap remailer is
>   > mostly useless without a "live connection" to the Net. 
>
>   I disagree - live connections  are great for fast-response systems,
>   but we got along just fine in the uucp dialup world with occasional
>   connections; 
>
>And if get someone to do secondary MX for you that _is_ fulltime
>connected, then the only latency for mail is the poll time.

I offer to MX, store and forward mail for anyone who wants to run
a remailer.